


I'd wait all night

by tamaraface



Category: Vampire Diaries (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Character Study, F/F, F/M, Future Fic, Gen, Slice of Life
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-05-15
Updated: 2012-05-15
Packaged: 2017-11-05 10:07:10
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,277
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/405224
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tamaraface/pseuds/tamaraface
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>But it's over. It's over and there's nothing left and no one to tell Caroline what to do next.</p>
            </blockquote>





	I'd wait all night

i want to change my orbit  
don’t care what you do now  
i want to live in darkness  
don’t want to be spun around  
 _son of a gun_ \- oh land

 

 

 

The last of the funerals are over in April. Caroline wears black and leaves flowers and hugs so many people. She mourns.

Stefan knocks on her door and his car is packed. He says goodbye, but he does not look up. She understands. She knows how loss can be so crippling, the effort to lift your head and see people who know is too great. But it's over. It's over and there's nothing left and no one to tell Caroline what to do next.

At night, she stares at the shadows dancing across the ceiling in her bedroom and wonders if she will ever sleep again. The sheets are heavy and she feels like she should be sweating and she can't really breathe (she doesn't need to breathe) but she absolutely will not cry anymore. She hates vampires and she hates werewolves and she hates people and how they die. She hates that this is her life and she isn't even living.

Caroline takes what little cash is in her mother's wallet and disappears before the sun comes up. She does not leave a note. She does not look back.

 

 

 

The bus is loud and crowded. It smells like feet and it takes forever, but she rides it North until the end of the line and Caroline vows come hell or high water never to take a Greyhound again.

 

 

 

In New York, she is invisible. Nobody knows who she is or has even heard of Mystic Falls. There are no cemeteries with names she recognizes and no strange things that go bump in the night. She does not think about magic or high school or dopplegangers or checking her Facebook. She considers briefly coloring her hair red, decides against it when she gets home to her closet of an apartment with a box of cheap dye in her hands. No one wants to know what Virginia is like because, on the rare occasion she's asked, Caroline says she's from Seattle. It rains there, she tells them. A lot. 

She finds hole-in-the-wall nightclubs and dances until her feet ache. She never gets carded. Nobody threatens to call her mother when she gets so wasted she can't stand. 

It's glorious.

 

 

 

There's a boy. He frequents the diner where Caroline found a job serving pancakes to hookers at three in the morning. He soon starts seating himself in her section. He is always ready with a joke and a smile and tips generously. He calls her by name when he asks about the specials, but her nametag reads “Alice” and it is always a shock to hear it. It is a reminder that Caroline is not what she once was, will never be again.

On a Thursday he asks what time her shift is over.

“Why?” Caroline asks stupidly.

He laughs and looks down and Caroline would find it endearing if she still found things endearing. He says, “I'd like to take you to a movie or something, maybe?”

His hair is dark and his eyes are blue and for a second Caroline remembers when. Then Caroline who is Alice who is no one rips the receipt off its pad and leaves it beside his empty plate. She tells the boy in the booth to pay at the counter and the man behind the counter she quits.

 

 

 

That weekend she gets _spectacularly_ drunk. She is drunk and lonely and drunk and she hurts all over. But more than anything else, more than she can ever remember being, Caroline is _thirsty_.

She leaves her apartment and forgets her keys and she buys more vodka and she does not think about home except for when she can't help it which is often.

She wakes up in a strange bed and there is dried blood on her hands and around her mouth. She finds a body in the living room and it has a face she does not know. She cries until she thinks she might throw up and then Caroline wraps the body in dirty sheets and buries it in a vacant lot come nightfall. The ground is hard and frozen and the shovel is a piece of shit. Caroline's hands blister then heal then blister again. She looks up every few seconds, terrified that she has been discovered, that someone is watching. No one sees and the night goes on like it always does.

She goes home and turns on the shower and sits under the spray until the water goes cold.

 

 

 

Christmas comes, or something like it, and Caroline wishes she could call her mother. She dials twice and hangs up before it rings.

 

 

 

Just after New Year's there is a ridiculous blizzard. Nearly ten inches of snow falls and the power goes out while Caroline is sleeping off a hangover. She wakes to the stench of blood congealing in her fridge and she has to compel the man across the hall after she bites him. He thinks she came over to borrow a cup of sugar, that she is a nice girl.

 

 

 

Caroline takes up smoking in March because she can and she figures out just how much liquor she can handle and still remember where she went the night before. Everything is bright and blurry and Caroline never knows what time it is, but she never wears a watch because she still hasn't found one that will match all her shoes. She makes a game of hunting pigeons in Central Park because they can fly and so are that much harder than squirrels to catch. She feeds on one once—feels its giant heart slowing against its ribs—then never again. There are plenty of blood banks in New York and security is kind of lax when you are young and blonde and smiling.

She starts taking strangers home for the hell of it; she keeps the monster behind a mask when she can and lets them take her from behind when she can't. It takes practice, but eventually she learns how to control her face.

 

 

 

There's this one night when Caroline wanders into a lesbian bar and doesn't notice for twenty minutes that the only guy in the place is the bouncer. She orders a Slippery Nipple because she's feeling ironic and she dances with a girl in combat boots and vintage McQueen because why the fuck not. 

She flirts and Caroline lets her and she buys another round and Caroline lets her.

Her name is Macy or Mindi or Molly or something and she's an art student at Tisch, which explains the paint under her fingernails. She talks and Caroline doesn't listen because she doesn't care, but she pays attention when Molly (Macy Mindi) drops a hand on Caroline's hip and squeezes. 

Caroline's face only slips once and Molly likes it when she bites.

 

 

 

She thinks she sees Stefan once in Grand Central. She is sober and it is day, but it is also crowded so she can't be sure. Caroline rises on her tippy-toes and waves her arm like a psycho and she almost shouts his name when she catches herself. She blinks and whoever (whatever) she saw is gone. It could have been a ghost. She does feel haunted.

 

 

 

When the leaves start to turn again, Caroline buys a ticket to LAX. She slips her last month's rent under her landlady's door and turns in her disgusting smock to her manager at CVS. She packs a single bag and commends herself for traveling light.


End file.
